One aspect of the .mobi potential that hasn't been discussed a lot is the
marketing potential that it opens up to advertisers. Let's face it--we see ads everywhere. TV, billboards, magazines, etc. Now, what do many people carry around with them constantly? That's right, their cell phones. Most of the time, when you see an ad (excluding online ads
) with a web address listed, you're probably not very likely to run to your computer and check out the site. But what if you had your cell phone with you, and saw a .mobi ad for something that interested you? Now that would be an entirely different matter, because we wouldn't have the whole "I wonder if this .com will display well on my phone?" matter to ponder.
This, friends, is a practical issue that could very well come into play when we see a site advertised on a TV commercial (after all, who isn't bored during commercials?), in a magazine while we're waiting in the doctor's office, or on a billboard that we pass while riding the subway to work.
The fact is that more often than not, we have our cell phone with us-- and I'm willing to conjecture that viewers would be
more likely to visit the advertised web addresses if they were .mobi. Granted, I'm not saying that this is true right now; I'm referring to the future, when internet browsing on cell phones is more commonplace. And that's when .mobi could very well become a major domain extension: a couple years down the road.
No one should give up on .mobi just yet. First, give it a chance to prove how useful it can be.
Just my 2 cents.
